Page:Christian Greece and Living Greek.djvu/160

138 CHRISTIAN GREECE AND LIVING GREEK. sold the highest offices to the highest bidder. Frederick the Great said the Turks would sell even their prophets for money. Felix Beaujour, a traveller, says : " The whole divan is for sale, if only the intending purchaser has money enough wherewith to buy it ; and this is the reason why the beys and the agas utilize the provinces to obtain the means of saving themselves from the bowstring and acquiring appointments to the office of pasha. They buy their appointments at Constantinople, where there is nothing which is not for sale, and they recoup themselves any way they can. Throughout the whole of the Ottoman Empire the governors work an inex- haustible mine of fines." This system extin- guished all honor in public offices, and encour- aged extortion. Judges as well as witnesses could be bought and bribed. A man who might have been honest in private life could not help being tainted with corruption and dishonesty when connected with the public service. The sense of duty and right upon which all public welfare depends was wanting. It was the habit of the pasha to make a peri- odical round of all the towns and villages under his jurisdiction, in order to receive the "volun- tary offerings'* of his wretched subjects. When